Best of Sublime Text 3: Features, Plugins, and Settings

Sublime Text 3 is an amazing piece of software. To start, it is a clean, functional, and fast code editor. Not only does it have incredible built in features (multi-edit and vim mode), but it has support for plugins, snippets, and many other things.

I know there have already been many articles like this online, but I am teaching a class on Sublime Text and thought it would be good to have all the information online. In this article, we'll be diving into the best parts of Sublime Text. You've probably already heard of some of these, but maybe not some others.

Command Palette ctrl + shift + p

For instance, you are able to call Git commands add, branch, commit, push, and pull all from the command palette.

To Use: ctrl + shift + p

File Switching ctrl + p

Sublime Text provides a really fast way to open up new files. Just press ctrl + p and start typing the name of the file you want. Once it shows up, just press enter and start typing directly into that file!

To Use: ctrl + p

Goto Symbols ctrl + r

When you have a large file with a bunch of methods, pressing ctrl + r will list them all and make them easier to find. Just start typing the one you want and press enter. To Use: ctrl + r

Sublime Text 3 also has a new feature (Goto Definition). It provides Sublime Text with more capabilities closer to an IDE. Take a look at that if you're interested.

Multi-Edit ctrl + click

This is in my opinion, the absolute best feature of Sublime. After using it here, it's hard to go back to other text editors. There are many different ways to use multi-edit:

ctrl + d: Select the current word and the next same word

ctrl + click: Every place you click will create a cursor to edit

ctrl + shift + f AND alt + enter: Find a word in your files and then select them all

Snippets

Snippets are yet another great feature of Sublime Text. You can use the pre-installed ones, build your own, or install a package that has more. All you have to do is type in a word and it will expand into your snippet. For example, typing lorem will generate lorem ipsum text.

To Use: Type a word that activates a snippet (ie lorem) and press tab.

Projects

Projects is an integral part of my workflow in Sublime Text. A project is just a Sublime workspace in which your folders are open and stored in the sidebar. This helps since you can define a project and add folders to it, and be able to switch between folders quickly.

Using projects, you will no longer have to go digging in Windows Explorer or Finder to get the project you want and drag it into Sublime.

To Save a Project: Go into the command palette and type save project

To Switch Projects: ctrl + alt + p

Packages/Plugins

Package Control

The absolutely necessary package manager for Sublime. This is the optimal way to install all of the plugins and themes listed below.

DocBlockr

A really great way to easily create doc blocks for many languages including JavaScript, PHP, and CoffeeScript. Just type in /** above your function and press tab. Watch the magic as DocBlockr takes the function name and variables and creates your doc block.

Git

Git helps you interact with your Git repo. It has support for all sorts of things like init, push, pull, branch, stash, and more. Read more on how exactly you can

Spacegray

More Themes

Color Schemes

In addition to changing your theme, you can also change your color scheme. These differ from themes since themes are packages for Sublime. Color Schemes are just a color scheme file and changing your settings.

I use the great Vintage mode in Sublime. It provides vi editing commands inside of Sublime Text. It isn't as fully featured as the original vi package, but it is the closest that I've seen in any text editor currently. That along with your keyboard shortcuts and command packages will make for a very fast developer.

The settings above automatically turn on Vintage mode when you open a file. If you don't like this feature, just remove vintage_start_in_command_mode and if you want to disable Vintage altogether, remove the ignored_packages setting.

Conclusion

There are so many parts to Sublime that I'm sure I missed some great things. Let me know if you find any other awesome packages or features and happy coding!

Craving more Sublime...

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